


sex_____&rocknroll

by hakuen



Series: Dahlia Stories [1]
Category: LUNA SEA, X JAPAN
Genre: (of all kinds), (sorry), I thought, IJS, Multi, Rollercoasters, and now here we are, and writing all these tags, band-typical drama, because why not and i like the venue, but from the rest of the story, canon-typical angst, deliberate capitalization of "hide" for readability, did i see anything about the story yoshiki tells in "We Are X", endless rain, fanfiction-typical pining, i just based it on the arena37c questionnaire, i just made it up yo, i looked up their tour schedule and picked a date that worked, i swear to god i made up the part about hide dragging yoshiki along to the palladium, i think most people will probably realize that but i also know it's a little jolting at first, it sure sounds like something that could happen at a jane's addiction concert, it was more plausible than even i thought, nowhere in my excessive research, or hide dragging him along to any lives in LA in general, or indeed anything about either of them going to the palladium let alone together, shameless abuse of lyrics, so anyway i'm revisiting this fic, where hide is a total fanboy and mentions seeing them, yoshiki doesn't name the band they saw there
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-05-06
Updated: 2007-05-06
Packaged: 2017-10-05 00:39:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 12,329
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/35829
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hakuen/pseuds/hakuen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A story of hide, and X before they were X JAPAN.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This story has had several incarnations. This particular version is the most recent publicly posted, for a contest on livejournal's xjapan_yaoi community. A winner was never announced, so let's pretend it won.
> 
> Warnings: Swearing, drinking, USTing, drug use in the last part. Not a deathfic. Spans 1982-1992.  
> Pairings: hide/[his girlfriend](http://www.geocities.com/cafele_psyence/musicrock1024.htm), whom I tagged "Reiko." hideyo, JxIno, Sugichi, Yoshiki/Toshi if you squint a little, Perry Farrell/Casey.
> 
> There are some formatting errors due to an archive bug that causes extra line breaks to be added automatically in places that I do not want them. This is probably the most noticeable near the beginning of chapter 2.

_   
JANUARY 1982   
_

In the alley behind a bar, five teenaged boys stood in an awkward crescent.

"You have to wait until Jail Break's walking off. Then you can come in and set up. Make it quick, they won't care if you're out of tune as long as it's loud and fast." The bouncer hesitated, and cast a doubtful glance at the boy clutching an angular honey-stained guitar. Dark hair flopped around his face in the freezing wind off Yokosuka Bay. His eyes were huge, darting around as his face slacked and tensed.

The bouncer hummed, considering. He peered at the boy and tried to meet his eyes in the darkness of the alley. "You'll be fine."

He went back inside, shaking his head at the assault of sound. Jail Break's singer might go somewhere eventually, but he wouldn't bet on the rest of the band getting beyond sailor bars like this.

The small audience cheered and Jail Break stumbled offstage. The bouncer peered out to check the crowd. A few young ladies with their tits hanging out saw the curtain move and screamed the singer's name, but nobody was trying to climb up and follow them. He pulled back again.

The next band filed in from the back door, weaving through stacks of equipment. The bouncer turned to eye them up and down. That guitarist still looked like he'd be off in the corner puking any minute now. He sighed and held the curtain aside, waving them through. The boy he'd been watching was last, and froze up at seeing the crowd, just as he had expected. He reached out a hand, not surprised when the boy jumped. "Come here. Give that to your friend, he can set up for you." The bouncer caught the other guitarist's eye across the stage and hooked a finger at him.

Two minutes and three shots later, he pressed a guiding hand to the boy's back and held aside the curtain again. "Take deep breaths. You'll find that once you start playing, it's a lot easier to be standing up there. You'll be fine, okay? Fine."

The boy heaved in air and nodded, sniffling, eyes still watering from the sting of bourbon.

"Go on. Wait, what did you call yourselves? We've got to announce something."

"Uh - Saber Tiger."

The bouncer nodded and shoved him on stage.

  

* * *

 

_   
JUNE 1986   
_

On a pay phone in the corner of the night's post-live hangout, Hide watched his bandmates with envy as they did yet another round of shots without him. "I thought you were going to be able to go tonight," his girlfriend said over the phone, and he winced.

"Yeah. So did I, but then Kyo got us this gig, and... I'm sorry. I did manage to leave you a message this time, at least?" He tried to inject that with perky charm, but it had to have fallen flat since Reiko didn't reply. He couldn't blame her, really. She kept planning these "real dates," and he kept having something come up. Same old bullshit, but since he was staying at her place now...

"I'll take you out to dinner tomorrow," Hide said. "It's our anniversary, isn't it?"

A long silence, then, "You remembered." Reiko's voice was soft, barely audible over the noise in the bar, and he suspected tears.

"Yeah." He turned red, and had to look around and double-check that nobody'd heard, even if there wasn't that much to hear. There was a long-haired guy leaning on the wall a few feet away who was kind of looking at him, and he looked familiar, too, but... "Well, after last year - I think I'd rather keep my dick where it is, thanks."

"Ha. It's true."

He grinned into the phone. "I'll see you later. Sleep well."

"Mmm... fine. I love you."

"Yeah, um," Hide looked around again, "love you too." He hung up, lip twisting a little in reprimand to himself. What to do, what to do... he turned toward the bar, preparing to dive back in to the crowd.

"Err... Hide-kun, right?"

"Huh?" He looked over and found the long-haired guy at his elbow. Hadn't even heard him walk up. "Yeah, actually."

"I'm Yoshiki from X." The man pulled off a pair of giant black sunglasses and shook back his fluffy light hair, holding out a hand.

Hide stared at him for a long moment. Then he blinked back to the present, stared at the hand, and finally stuck out his own to grasp Yoshiki's for a couple hesitant shakes. "It's been a while since I've done that, sorry. Yeah, that's right, I've seen you. I like that song..." He tried to think, slapping himself into public mode.

"I'll Kill You? Stop Bloody Rain?" Yoshiki smiled at him.

"Stab Me in the Back, I think it's called?"

Yoshiki's grin lit up his face and Hide was returning it before his mind could catch up, the sight putting an odd warmth in his chest. The man looked like a thrilled puppy, bouncing on his toes and yanking at Hide's sleeve. "Come drink with us!"

Hide made a helpless gesture toward his band, but was carried along to sit in the X encampment. They'd pulled a dozen chairs around a table for four so far, and Yoshiki dispatched Toshi to find two more after throwing names around so quickly Hide didn't catch more than two - Taiji, who he already knew in passing, and Toshi, whose former chair he was urged into by Yoshiki. Who then sat in Hide's lap with a laugh and a flip of his hair. "You don't mind, do you?"

"Well, um. No?" Odd, but he didn't.

Yoshiki kept talking and he listened, made comments where they seemed to be wanted. It was interesting to see an act like his at such close range. This guy seemed unconscious of everything but himself, carrying on like he knew he'd be loved and listened to by everyone he met... but that had to be part of his gimmick, nobody could honestly be that...

"Well? Hide-kun?" Yoshiki had an expectant smile and Hide re-ran the last line. At least his memory was cooperating tonight.

"I'm committed to Saver Tiger. But I'd love to jam with you guys, and if I give up on them - yeah, I'll give you a call or something, why not?"

"Good." Yoshiki's smile lost a tiny edge that Hide hadn't realized was there before, and he felt Yoshiki relax a hair against his arm.

_Why? I'm just me..._

Toshi returned with chairs and a waitress bearing a tray of shots, to the appreciation of the group. He beamed and set the chairs beside Yoshiki and Hide, patting Yoshiki's shoulder and pointing at one.

Yoshiki shook his head and Toshi looked confused.

"Go ahead," Yoshiki told him, "Sit down!" Toshi only looked more confused at this, leaning around to get a glimpse of Hide's face.

Hide met his eyes with a shrug. Hey, he'd just met the guy, how the fuck should he know?

Five shots and three beers later, he broke loose from Yoshiki and company long enough to weave his way around to the rest of Saver Tiger.

Kyo raised an eyebrow at him.

"Keep it shut," Hide snarled. "Look, I guess I... I guess I'm gonna go with these guys, I dunno, I'll see you all at practice tomorrow..."

"You got a new girlfriend or what?" Nick said, tapping one of his rings against a beer can, all innocence.

Hide looked at him.

"Well? We were wondering, you know. She looks kinda cute from here. Long hair's always - " The new bassist, Toki, elbowed Nick and he stopped talking with a shrug. Still tapping on the beer can.

"He's X's drummer and I don't know why he insisted on sitting in my lap. But he did. Insist, that is. Not a girlfriend. No."

Nick opened his mouth, and Hide said, "Before you say something about me protesting too much, think about how pissed I am at you already for fucking up the same song in the same place for the third live in a row."

Nick cleared his throat, still not meeting his eyes. "Congratulations on stringing words together so well and so _quickly_, too." Toki put both hands on Hide's shoulders. "I was just going to say that, well, I quit. And if he's not a chick, then you're - " Kyo elbowed Nick in the gut, bringing a merciful end to the can-tapping. Nick straightened, catching his breath, and Kyo suggested that he might leave now.

The combined hold of Toki and Kyo kept Hide from diving after Nick and starting a fight. "Look, why don't you go back to those nice X fellas now? Good riddance, right? Come on," Kyo soothed, holding a shot of Old Crow toward him, "it's your favorite! Drink up and just go back over there, now, there's a good boy."

Kyo was a nutcase, and a flamboyant one at that, but at least he could more-or-less sing. Punching him in the jaw equalled a bad idea even to a piss-drunk Hide, who rolled his eyes and took the shot.

"I thought maybe you weren't coming back," Yoshiki laughed into his ear a minute later.

Hide tried to ignore the prickle down his neck and mumbled, "So where are we going again?"

"My place." Yoshiki tugged his hand and Hide followed, keeping his eyes down to watch his skinny legs in their black vinyl walk down the steps. They stopped at a van.

"You aren't going to kill me and chop up my body to throw in the bay, are you?"

"No, no." Yoshiki snickered at him, and held the door open.

Taiji was already inside, leaning on the window. He cracked an eye open as Hide landed on the seat beside him with a little bounce and an, "Oops!"

"Hey," Taiji said, and smiled a little.

Hide nodded. He could still feel the anger just under the surface, but - at least for now, it seemed like his rational self was well in the driver's seat. Not bad.

 

* * *

 

The sun was well up by the time Toshi pulled the van around by Hide's work. He hadn't had time to go home first, and was wearing one of Yoshiki's shirts.

"You know, uh - " Toshi fumbled with the keys at the wheel and turned the van off.

"Hmm?" Hide yawned and lifted his head from the window.

"Yoshiki... he's... he seems like a really nice guy, doesn't he? Really... _cute_."

"Um. I guess? Yeah?" Hide hazarded. He patted down his hair, then his clothes, checking that everything was good and he was at least passable for work.

"It's okay, you can be honest."

"...okay." Still only half paying attention, he found his cigarettes in his boot, gave a happy yelp and pulled one out. "Got a lighter in here?"

"Yeah, here." Toshi handed it over. "But Yoshiki - "

"Yoshiki seems like one thing and he's another thousand underneath, is that what you're trying to say? Got it."

"Something like that."

"Thank you." Hide smiled at him, and meant it, too. "Are you regretting it?"

"...no."

"What would you have done, otherwise?" Hide retied his boot, after settling the cigarettes in the pocket of his borrowed shirt.

"I wanted to be a doctor."

"Huh. So did I, actually." Hide considered that. "Instead you got co-opted to partake in Yoshiki's grand vision, huh?"

"Something like that." Toshi laughed a little. "You're still drunk, aren't you?"

"Completely snockered." Hide flashed him a grin. "Lucky for me, they don't mind, long as I'm not late. Speaking of which..."

"Oh, you have ten minutes still."

"Why the hell'd Yoshiki tell me I only had fifteen and you lived fourteen minutes away, then?"

Toshi's sympathetic smile told the tale.

"That fucker."

"Well?"

"And he's curled right back up and snoring now, too, isn't he?"

"Usually, since he was up all the night before writing, and doesn't have a job." Toshi shrugged, and smiled again. It seemed like nothing would crack that thing off from over his granite chin. Hide caught himself staring at it and looked down.

"So it's your lot in life to be his provider and voice slave until his dream is realized, huh?"

"Well, I wouldn't - er..." Toshi eyed the smirk on Hide's face. "I suppose you could say that, but I made the decision."

"We are the choices we make," Hide murmured.

"Huh?"

"Some people believe in fate and some people believe in themselves." Hide hopped out the door. "So, we are our path, or we are the choices we make. I've always leaned toward the former, but who knows. I could be convinced." He slammed the door, waving at Toshi, who waved back.

  

* * *

 

_   
AUGUST 1987   
_

"-so I was wondering, are you staying here tonight after the live or moving on already?"

Hide turned from his attempts to catch the bartender's attention and nearly poked an eye out on a hard pouf of bleached hair. His eyes fell on fluttering eyelashes so overburdened with mascara that they looked more like short black sticks of incense than anything human.

He jerked away without thinking and she leaned closer. She'd had balls to follow him into a place like this, all right, but...

"Sorry, babe." He scrambled up from the stool, ignoring her pout but feeling guilty anyway. Even if she was only after an autograph and a chat, she was still too close, trapping him against the wooden bar. He felt her breath on his arm and it sent cold prickles down his spine. He hadn't had a drink yet, wasn't even awake -

Hide's body trembled before he forced himself into control. "I have to go, I'm really sorry." He pushed the stool back and forced his way through on the other side before she could say anything more.

The bar was crowded with suits doing business over lunch and drinks. Hide slid around one group and their laughter didn't drown out a few comments about his hair, his big square sunglasses. He ignored them and stretched his arm out to catch the heavy door before it closed behind two coming in.

Outside, Hide took a deep breath of thick summer air. He looked around. Cloudy grey light over a normal street, everyone ignoring him as if he too were normal. He spotted another bar down the street.

This was one of the bad days. He'd felt it when he woke up, recognized the tremble in his fingers and shiver in his gut. He'd tried calling Reiko. Talking to her would usually help, at least enough to get him up and in something like order until it was time for the live. She hadn't answered, though. So here he was barhopping at eleven in the morning.

He always had to have a couple drinks before going out on stage, then a couple more before going out to say the right things to the right people. Half of getting anywhere was who you were friends with, everyone knew that. He fucking hated it but he knew he could do it. After a couple drinks.

On days like this, he'd stand backstage shaking so hard that he had to have a couple drinks before he could unpack his guitar. But it was worth it. Even the worst lives were always worth it for the rush.

He stepped into the new bar and spotted someone with long hair and sunglasses just like his, sitting way back in a dark corner. Go figure, right? He picked up a glass of Old Crow and an amaretto sour at the bar and strolled over to join Yoshiki.

"Hey." He slid the drink across the table and took a seat.

Yoshiki looked up, surprised. "Oh. Hey."

"Don't worry. I don't have to talk about anything."

"Good." Yoshiki went back to his reading.

Hide smiled at the bent head and felt oddly at peace.

  

* * *

 

_   
JANUARY 1989   
_

Hide came home to a note.

This wasn't unusual. "Home" was still Reiko's apartment and she still had the same job that she'd had when they met, at the nursing home a couple blocks away. She needed her sleep and a regular schedule.

_And a regular guy, but that's... her choice._

He picked up the note. Read it.

Well, it seemed that she'd remade her choice.

"Why now?" he wondered to himself, flipping on a lamp so as not to stumble over anything and wake her.

Sony, too, had remade their choice of a year ago after the way Vanishing Vision had sold. X would be a major band in a few months. She knew that. He'd told her last night.

_And took away her last illusion that you'd ever become a regular guy with a regular job - even if it was as a hairdresser._

Oh.

He guessed he couldn't blame her for not wanting to deal with her boyfriend the rock idol when she'd signed on with - and supported for almost three years, don't forget that, Hide - a guy who played in a band that probably wasn't really going anywhere. A guy who, at the end of the night, she could have for herself.

If X continued the way they were going, whoever he was in a relationship with from now on would never truly have him to herself.

He shuffled into the bedroom. It wasn't the time for this, but - "Thank you for loving me," he said.

She rolled over slowly, eyes open and glinting in the light from the door. "It wasn't exactly tough."

"Sure." He heard the choke in his voice, tried to laugh. It came out all wrong.

She sighed and sat up. Opened her arms to him just like always, pulled him down beside her regardless of his street clothes and smell of smoke and being a general mess.

"I think it's better for you this way, too. You don't have to tear yourself in half now."

"I wasn't - "

"Okay, how does this sound? I don't have to pretend I didn't hear anything when you have wet dreams about guys in your band."

"_What?_"

She patted his nose, kissed him. "I'm kidding."

"Good." He settled down into her arms. One last time.

"...mostly."

"_WHAT?_"

"It was only once."

"Oh no," he groaned, "I wish you hadn't told me... no..."

She laughed and pushed the door shut. Then she began to tug off his jacket.

"One more round?"

"Sure, why not," Hide murmured.

It was more teary than hot, but it had always been good between them. The last time was no exception.


	2. Chapter 2

_   
MARCH 1989   
_

_"X!"_ Toshi screamed, over the hard pound of double bass.

Hide spun and dashed to the end of the stage, jumping across cords, over an amp, laughing like a maniac. He spun in circles, lifting his guitar high to swing it out over the heads of the security guys. They looked up at him, wary that he might throw himself onto the crowd that was screaming and bouncing.

A wave of human hands reached for him, for all of them, but especially him right now because he was _right there_ and they could hardly believe it. They all loved him and wanted him and shrieked his name so hard he couldn't even hear Taiji's bass from the amp right behind him, but could only feel it thumping through his feet, keeping him grounded in the song, in this odd meld of the lot of them known as X. It was fucking _gold_, this feeling. It was the greatest high anyone could ever get.

He ran to the other side of the stage and slid up close behind Pata for a minute. Pata grinned at him as their hands shifted in unison, guitars singing harmony as precise as the sharp movements of Yoshiki's hands across the toms far behind them. He bared his teeth and struck like a snake at Pata's shoulder. Then he dodged away and laughed, laughed with Pata, laughed with the voices rising so hard he could hear them even through the euphoria and the blood rushing in his ears.

He loved these guys. Even when they pissed him off, he still felt that steady throb of love in his chest, binding them all into something miraculous.

Toshi came up behind him and hung over his shoulder, putting the mike in front of him so they could both sing, heads pressed close. "Last song, can I ride your shoulders?" Toshi said in his ear with a grin after dropping the mike, and ran off to center stage, not even looking back for Hide's amused nod.

The song was almost over and he popped the guitar strap off his shoulders, holding his latest baby high by her wildly painted neck. He flipped off the audience with a wicked laugh and then waved them up, higher! Louder!

They roared in response, screaming his name and Yoshiki's and _X, X, X_ and he thought, _There is nothing but this. There is no other feeling._

"We are!"

**   
_"X!!"_   
**

"We are!"

**   
_"X!!"_   
**

"_You_ are!"

**   
_"X!!"_   
**

"You are!"

**   
_"X!!"_   
**

Toshi pulled him backward, and Hide looked around confused before remembering he'd agreed to haul the big lug around. He said, "Why didn't you get Taiji?" but Toshi pulled the guitar back down on his shoulders, positioned him in front of the drum riser and started climbing aboard. He gave up and held the guitar tight to his body until Toshi's legs stopped kicking around and he seemed to have his balance.

Hide walked forward slowly, playing again, and heard Pata's choked laugh when he spotted the two of them, Hide's hair with Toshi hidden behind it - or at least it had to come damn close, right? He paced to the edge of the stage where he was almost knocked over by the screaming approval. Toshi held the mike down for him again and he babbled and yipped into it, grinning.

They returned to the drum riser and Toshi hopped off, ran down and grabbed Taiji around the neck to have him shout _X!!_ with the crowd. Hide could feel Yoshiki watching him between the racks of clear drums and somehow that brought a feeling almost as heady as the rush of the crowd. "Yoshiki!" he yelled, dark-painted eyes creased in a wicked grin.

"What?" came a barely audible shout, between a hard double crash of cymbals. He ran around the side of the set and came up beside Yoshiki, started to headbang and Yoshiki grinned at him and joined in. They whipped their hair side to side together, the riser vibrating and bouncing under Hide's feet.

Yoshiki stopped and leaned over, so far that Hide was scared for a moment that he'd slip off the stool and crash. But he turned his head up and gave Hide what had to be the sweetest smile he'd ever seen. Arched back like a stretching cat, hair tumbling down to fall around Hide's feet, he looked so fluffy and cute that it should've been illegal, but somehow...

Hide's eyes fixated on those lips and the muscles straining in Yoshiki's arms as he kept drumming on the closest tom and something just _snapped_, possessed Hide with the insane desire to lay a kiss on this man-woman-drummer-_creature_ lying there flirting up at him. Despite everything logical in his mind screaming _NO_, it was so fucking overwhelming--

He ducked his head away at the last possible second, blood rushing hot and acidic in his chest. He could see the surprise in Yoshiki's eyes as he straightened up.

Then they were both laughing and headbanging again and Hide shoved from his mind how close he had been to giving the fans something to _really_ scream about. He grinned at Yoshiki and jumped back down to the stage.

With a high-pitched yodel, he raced forward to the edge, playing tag and throwing picks to the shrieking horde.

  

* * *

  

_So was that fate or choice?_

...let's not think about it.

But he couldn't stop thinking about how the high of the live was eclipsed by that of hovering, breathless, a heartbeat away from kissing Yoshiki.

  

* * *

  

_   
MAY 1990   
_

An empty bottle of whiskey stood behind an overflowing ash tray on Yoshiki's coffee table.

"And that's how I found him." Yoshiki's fingers flexed hard around the glass and Hide feared for a moment that it would break. It held, if barely, and Hide reached up to fill it once more with dark wine.

"How old were you?"

"Ten. He was thirty-three. I..." Yoshiki's throat closed, and Hide slid his hands over strong shoulders, desperate to convey what he didn't know how to put in words without sounding like an ass. "I don't know what I'm... what I'm going to do when I'm older than him?"

Yoshiki's tears made his eyelashes stick together with each blink. Hide took a slow harsh breath and tugged Yoshiki toward him. Hide's chest was bony, but it had to do.

"What... what bothered me the most," Yoshiki said after a while, sniffling as he pulled himself upright. Hide was jostled and a drop of water splashed on Yoshiki's wrist. He saw Yoshiki look up; Hide could feel tears running down his face, gathering to fall from his chin.

Yoshiki ducked, blinking hard, and his arms tightened around Hide. He gathered a breath. "What really disturbed me, and has haunted everything I've done since then, is that after he died... the world just... _went on_. That sounds so stupid. I had honestly expected something to change, something beyond myself and my mother, some acknowledgement from the greater world that he had... lived, and loved us, and was dead before he'd done a quarter of what he wanted. He did it to himself, but," Yoshiki shook his head, weak, into Hide's chest, "I never expected... in two months, everyone but the two of us forgot him like he'd never existed."

Hide's mouth twisted, and he slid one hand up to stroke the back of Yoshiki's head, holding him close. "So, that's why you are the way you are? Can't take no for an answer, determined to be unforgettable?..."

"I suppose so," Yoshiki whispered. He closed his eyes.

_Life and death aren't truth to him, aren't a natural part of being human_, Hide thought. _He's terrified that he'll be erased and forgotten... no faith in anything but his physical existence and his existence in the memories of others. I only have faith in the me that is independent of this body, and I know _I'm _not going to end when this awkward shell is cast off._

"I think that you should sleep now. Yoshiki?"

A murmur from his chest seemed to agree. He gathered Yoshiki in his arms, about to attempt lifting him.

"No, wait."

"Hmm?" Hide settled them back on the couch.

An elegant hand slid behind his neck, tugging him forward. Lips brushed his in a solemn caress. "Thank you for listening to me. You always listen to me. I never really listen to you, do I?"

"You do." Hide looked away. _Don't give him any less than what he just offered to you. Come on._ He met Yoshiki's eyes. "You may not always be in the room when I'm saying it. But you seem to know anyway."

The world felt alight around him from the glow of Yoshiki's smile.

  

* * *

  

  
_DECEMBER 1990_   


X had spent the greater part of the last seven months in Los Angeles, taking turns flying back to Japan to appear at film gigs. For the first two months in LA there had been nothing for Hide to do but wander around the city, practice whatever he wanted whenever he felt like it.

Yoshiki had no time for anything more than a half hour on the phone with him now and then, perhaps lunch every couple of weeks. The others were occupied with their own obsessions. Hide was left alone and more or less idle.

He'd fallen into a strange, dull depression, a state of mind that drove him even further off-center from his body than how things stood in their usual uneasy truce.

Later, he realized that it had been withdrawal, whether physical, psychological or both, from the high of lives. It was possible, also, that years of stress, and the feelings he'd pushed back at the end of his only stable relationship throughout most of those years, were all coming boiling out in one giant mess of emotion now that he'd finally relaxed long enough to let them.

But that was something else that he didn't think of until much later.

At the time he had no idea what the fuck was going on. He was only capable at rare moments of even seeing that this was not normal, of recognizing that it was shitty and that he did not like it. At. All.

The longest he'd gone between some sort of performance since he was seventeen was two weeks. Two months had him getting smashed and smashing everything and everyone unlucky enough to be in sight, but still not feeling like there was any reality to anything around him.

_That_ pushed his remaining sanity right out the window on gossamer pink sherbet wings and the only thing left to do was call Yoshiki and ask if he was real.

_"Do... I... exist?"_ he'd ground out, on a pay phone outside a club. His teeth collided with grimy black plastic and his head knocked against the brick wall with each word but he still didn't feel _here, real_.

Yoshiki thought he was joking because, well, he was talking, wasn't he? He was born, he grew up, he bought a guitar that he didn't even know what it was off some broke sailor when he was fifteen, and he played guitar now for Yoshiki when they weren't letting all of Japan simmer in its desire to see X play live in _their_ hometown and...

_"You're joking, right, Hide? You've gotta cut down the drinking, man, this is the fourth time you've called me drunk this week and it's only Tuesday,"_ Yoshiki laughed. Hide didn't.

_Can I come over?_ he wanted to ask the phone, beg. _Can you pretty pretty please let me in your building and up to your apartment and maybe even into your room and make me feel real because, you know what, I think fucking you just might do it and it's all I can think about and I don't know what I'm going to do, save me?_ and he didn't say it.

But he learned from that phone call that Yoshiki, just thinking of him - not even hearing his voice, let alone seeing him, (touching him, he thought and the shudder of want left him clutching the wall to keep his feet) - was the only, if remote, alternative high he'd found yet.

So he entwined Yoshiki into that feeling in his mind, his body. The everything that was all of why he stayed on in the physical world like this at the advanced age of twenty-six.

He called Yoshiki every night, whether they had time to talk or not. Even when he knew Yoshiki wouldn't be home. He called to hear the voice on the machine, to get that little touch of _real, here_ that was holding him together until the time came when they could finally return to Japan for the Christmas lives. Until he could piece himself back into more than base-level functionality. The film gigs he did cameos at helped, and so did finding a new band on one of those trips, but...

A few days before they were all set to leave Los Angeles, a friend he'd made at the Whisky took him to see a band called Jane's Addiction.

He was still in a high daze the next morning when he called Yoshiki. "They're brilliant - you have to see them before we go back, what are you doing tonight? They're playing the Palladium and Josh can get us in. We have to go, I don't care what you planned, you're cancelling it and we're going."

"...okay," Yoshiki said, his voice faint but not reluctant.

_Probably just happy to hear me sound like I'm alive again._

Hell, I'm happy to feel_ alive again._

  

* * *

  

"Come on!" He tugged at Yoshiki's hand, clasped tight within his own. "I want to be at the front."

"You're crazy," Yoshiki laughed. "It'll sound terrible."

"That isn't the point with them. It's... it's something else. I don't know. You have to feel it."

He knew that Yoshiki was eyeing him like, _Who are you and what have you done with my Hide?_ But that didn't matter right now. All that mattered was the live.

The night became a blur of movement, sound and bright lights, the press of bodies. Sweat and music and the transcendance of the moment. That high, amazing voice arcing over the genius basslines and inspired guitar.

Yoshiki's hands stayed with him, on his shoulders, his chest, holding him steady through the flow and crush of the pit for the entire night.

He came out stumbling, giggling and higher than he'd felt in his life. "It makes a difference to have you with me, do you know? I'm not the same without you."

After the words left his mouth, he wished them back, hoped that Yoshiki hadn't heard.

"I know. I know," Yoshiki's voice murmured in his ear, his arm still close around Hide's shoulders.

They stumbled down Sunset Boulevard together, giggling in each other's arms like a pair of teenagers.

"Do we have to go back?" Hide said wistfully, staring down Vine. All the punk clubs were in roaring business. His home for the last few months, and now that the end he'd wished for was here, he wanted nothing more than to put it off.

_Well, it's always your choice, isn't it._

Even when it feels like there are no options. It's only within the framework of the larger choice.

"Come on." Yoshiki reached up and combed the hair back from Hide's face, smiling a little. "We have a few hours yet."

"Thank you." He leaned in, about to try a kiss - _why? you idiot_ \- but Yoshiki turned at the sound of footsteps behind them.

"Hey." A familiar voice. American.

"Oh - Josh!" Hide thumped himself in the forehead. "Shit, sorry. I forgot we were meeting you out there."

"It's okay." Josh was tall, broad-shouldered but skinny, and the only place he seemed to not have tattooed was his face. No piercings, though. He'd told Hide, when he encountered that particular sort of puzzled looking-over that he recognized by now, that he'd gotten an aversion to needles from his mother.

Hide didn't ask, considering what else Josh had apparently learned from his mother.

"Where do you want to go?"

"Um..." Yoshiki looked between the two of them with a shrug and the typical sweet smile.

_Ha, can't get me with that anymore. Dork. You know where you want to go, you just don't want to look like an idiot if you ask and it's wrong._ Hide grabbed the both of them by the arm and swung them around. "To the Whisky!"

  

* * *

  

_   
JANUARY 1991   
_

The thing was, Hide thought as he walked into Meguro Rokumeikan, they really got along. They got along and they talked a hell of a lot more now than Yoshiki did with Toshi. He knew that was hard sometimes for Toshi, but that was just how it had gone.

Yoshiki was the first person he'd ever thought of calling his best friend. And no matter how odd it made him feel, after the way his tendency toward hanging on people he liked turned from friendly to something else with Yoshiki, and _only_ Yoshiki -

He was helpless against the growth of an unnervingly attractive thought...

Shit, is _this_ being in love?

He had never really been in love with Reiko. Sure, he'd cared a lot about her. But that wasn't being in love.

He didn't know what sexy was except as his body told him so, and he guessed from observation that his body had some kinda fucked up standards compared to the rest of humanity. Like he had a gauge off at birth and everything got miscalibrated from there. He _really_ didn't know what love was supposed to be. He'd never seen it in his life.

But as far as best guesses went, he'd begun to suspect that this was as close as it got. And that was, well... 'a problem' was putting it lightly.

Luna Sea were already on stage by the time he got up in the VIP box, setting up and messing with the crowd. Ryuichi was just visible behind the curtain off stage right, and he wondered for a moment if Ryuichi had ever been too afraid of _what might be_ to pass that curtain. If there'd been some tired middle-aged guy with a flask of bourbon and a gruff pep talk for him, too.

He looked back to the others again just in time to catch Sugizo waving at him frantically. Ah, god, that fucking idiot, he was going to get the crowd looking up here and then there'd be a riot on the stairs!

He winced and flapped his hand, muttering, "Yeah, yeah, I see you."

The thin guitarist beamed up beneath enormous hair and miles of fake pearls, and he couldn't help but smile back. The guy was crazy, but at least he was brilliant and entirely too loveable along with it. He absently hoped that Sugizo had remembered to bring a pipe tonight, because he really didn't feel like sucking straight from a joint.

The screech of feedback and then a low thrum heralded the techs in the box beside him starting on J's bass. He watched J go through the strings, tip of a pink tongue flashing out to be held between red-painted lips now and then. Gradually, Hide became aware that Inoran was also watching J and his tongue, an odd look on the smaller guitarist's face. He began to feel uncomfortable and had to look past Inoran to watch Shinya tighten his cymbals.

They were all ready at last. Sugizo gave a nod, Ryuichi burst out to the front whirling like a dynamo, and Hide was caught up just like the first time in the throbbing energy that was these particular five people on a stage together.

There was something in them, just as there had been something in X even before Hide had joined, that caught the eye and the heart, and brought people to their feet roaring.

He'd gotten Yoshiki to sign them to Extasy finally, sight unseen, his enthusiasm and having talked about nothing else every night for two weeks enough to drive Yoshiki into it - for the sake of having a conversation with Hide that didn't revolve around this band Lunacy for once if nothing else, he was sure, but who cared if it got them the opportunity they deserved?

Yoshiki hadn't had time while X were all in Japan this Christmas to meet them, so Hide and Luna Sea were going to LA in a few days. Somehow he had a feeling that getting used to Yoshiki's unthinking autocracy would take as much adjustment time for J and Sugizo as he could possibly wring from Yoshiki's schedule.

They were pretty easygoing and knew what a great break this was, which helped a lot, but it had taken _him_ over a year to stop gritting his teeth the entire time he was in a recording studio with Yoshiki, and since then Yoshiki had lost most of his hesitancy in dictating precisely what he wanted, when and how.

Hide did not envy people who were new at working with his best friend; it was hard to fumble your way past the attitude with which the orders were given for long enough to accept how right they generally were.

  

* * *

  

_   
SEPTEMBER 1991   
_

"No." Hide stared at the dressing room wall, eyes wide, blank. "This has to be a joke, I can't believe - "

Josh from Los Angeles had been calling Extasy all week to leave him messages, _Please call me_, and _Hide, you need to call me, I'm sorry but I mean it_, and only now had he gotten them, their second night in Osaka. He'd called immediately, because Josh didn't mess around saying things like that, and now he wished that he'd waited until after the live, because...

"I can't believe they're breaking up." Hide shook his head, numb.

_"They're playing two last nights, the twenty-fifth and twenty-sixth in Honolulu,"_ Josh's deep voice said over the hiss and crackle of the phone line. _"If you think you can make it, tell me now so I can get you in."_

"I can make it," Hide said. His voice cracked. "Thank you. I'll call... later."

He hung up and turned to Yoshiki, who was trying not to show how worried he was. "Jane's Addiction is disbanding. I'm going to their final lives in Hawaii."

Yoshiki blinked. Then his face clouded over, and before he could even begin, Hide held up a hand and said, "I know, okay? I know. I'll figure something out. I promise I won't screw you over."

Yoshiki sighed and nodded, tapping a slow beat on his thighs.

_It's damn lucky that I dragged him along to those lives, and he knows just how much they mean-- meant, to me and..._ Hide chewed his lip and shook his head. Still had to play himself tonight, had to pull it together. He got up to dig a beer from the small refrigerator by Yoshiki's chair, cracking it to take a long gulp.

 

* * *

 

The next day on the Shinkansen back to Tokyo, he grabbed a schedule. They played Hiroshima on the twenty-fourth. Four hours on the Shinkansen, eight hours' flight. It was yesterday there, so he could arrive on the morning of the twenty-fifth and have time to find his hotel and take a nap before meeting Josh at Aloha Tower.

They played Sapporo on the twenty-eighth. Leave Hawaii in early morning of the twenty-seventh, arrive in Tokyo where it would be the morning of the twenty-eighth, ninety minutes' flight to Sapporo and...

It could work. He would make it work.

  

* * *

  

_Holy shit. Holy shit. Holy shit..._ He dug his nails into his palms and tried to take deep breaths but it wasn't helping. He was shaking like a leaf and on the verge of tears and he was about to meet Perry Farrell and all he could think about was how fucking _nervous_ he was.

He bit his lip hard. Then Josh pulled him forward and... there he was. P. fucking Farrell, flesh and blood, three feet in front of him.

Getting a blow job from a dark-haired woman who must answer to "Casey," since that's what Perry was groaning over and over.

Hide's jaw slacked and his eyes pasted themselves to the wall over Perry's head.

"So he's - " Perry opened his eyes and fastened them on Josh, only a little impaired by what was going on in his lap, "He's what? Japanese, you said? Wow, that's cool, man. I had no idea there were Japanese rock stars."

"Yeah." Josh seemed far less flummoxed than Hide but still sounded a little odd. "Yeah, they um... they do. And his band is really great, too. They're called X..." Perry arched back, mouth pulled into a silent rictus of ecstasy as Casey's head slammed down hard and her throat worked around his spasming cock. Josh blinked, cleared his throat and gave Hide an apologetic look from the corner of his eyes. Hide still stared straight ahead, eyes fixed at the wall.

"So," Perry said a while later. Casey sat demurely beside him firing a spoon of heroin. "Heeeeee... day! Yeah, that's cool, man, really cool. Look, Heeee-day, why don't you come along back to the hotel and we'll all get cozy, have a little fireside chat, huh? Sounds great. Oh no, baby, that one's all worn out, you've gotta poke one on the other side - " Casey slid a hand up Perry's arm and, finding a vein that seemed satisfactory to all parties, pressed in the needle. Perry didn't move at all, didn't seem to notice as she tested that she'd hit, wiggled it around a little. Finally she pressed down the plunger. Perry hissed a little as the needle withdrew and Hide saw a drop of pink-stained fluid fall from its tip.

"Yeah, man," Perry said slowly a few minutes later, a blissed-out smile on his face. "Let's go back to the hotel."


	3. Chapter 3

_   
EARLY JUNE 1992   
_

"Yeah," Hide laughed, "I'll see you later then. Thanks, J. Yeah, hi to Sugizo, I know he'll pout if - yeah." He snickered into the phone wedged in his shoulder and swung the refrigerator door shut behind him, hands filled with leftover Chinese food and a pair of beers. He set the carton of Kung Pao chicken on the counter in front of Yoshiki, nudged him, nodded at it.

Yoshiki took the beers from his other hand and untangled the caps from Hide's hair with careful fingers. He cracked them open, then hunted down two pairs of chopsticks before digging in. "Thank you."

Hide smiled at the back of Yoshiki's head and hung up. He leaned across the counter, resting his chin on clasped hands. "I missed you. How did the other lives go?"

"Really well," Yoshiki mumbled around a slice of bell pepper, eyes wide in emphasis. "You should've stayed."

"Yeah." Hide tipped his head down to study his hands, one foot pulled up to tap his toes on the linoleum. "I wish I could've, but we only had the warehouse for that one day."

Yoshiki shrugged, smiled at him. "I think they forgave you. Me, on the other hand - I might never forgive you for having deprived me of getting to watch you bounce around in the VIP box like it was the pit, and shouting your head off just like the rest of the crowd and making me join in - " He dodged the light cuff Hide aimed at his head. They stood and grinned at each other.

Hide recollected himself after a minute. _Won't do to lose yourself for too long._ "Here, I get some of that too." He pulled across the other set of chopsticks and began to steal pieces of chicken and peanuts around the jabs and feints of Yoshiki's sticks.

They were laughing so hard after a while that Hide couldn't take a bite for fear of choking. He slapped his chopsticks down on the counter. "Fine, you win!!" He grabbed Yoshiki by the back of the head and pulled him close, planted a smacking kiss on his forehead, then gave up all pretense of coolness and latched on with both arms to hug him hard.

He held Yoshiki so tight it felt like he'd break his own ribs. Yoshiki's arms slowly came up to wrap around him and squeeze back. Hide's head was buried in Yoshiki's neck and the scent of lavender warmed his grateful nose. He hoped belatedly that Yoshiki wouldn't feel the tears that poured from his eyes, soaking the smooth blue cotton of an expensive shirt collar.

"What's wrong?" he heard Yoshiki say. His voice sounded far away, muffled by the press of his lips to Hide's hair.

Hide didn't answer.

After a while, he began to realize that Yoshiki's cologne was giving him a wicked hard-on. He sighed and pulled away, sniffling and wiping his eyes, hair a long fluffy mess around his shoulders. "I thought you wanted to go to the beach?"

"Yeah." Yoshiki eyed him. A mixture of happiness and worry fought over his face. _Not so masked to me, are you? I'm glad..._ "I've got a whole half-day off, after all. I'm not going to fucking miss the beach for some stupid little storm."

Hide shook his head and had to grin. They put away the rest of the chicken and drank the beers quickly. Then Hide started to dig around for jackets, because no matter what Yoshiki said, Hide knew he'd still be whining like crazy as soon as he got all wet and cold, and that thin suede jacket he'd come over with was not going to cut it.

They walked down the alley from Hide's building and stepped onto the broad sidewalk that edged the beach. Raindrops splashed as they hit the concrete, puddles everywhere. The wind whipped off the ocean.

Side by side, Hide huddled close while Yoshiki walked normally beneath his umbrella, they went north toward the pier. Brown trash bags and plastic tarps here and there beneath the palm trees betrayed the presence of the few bums who'd been too unlucky or too stubborn to get a place in the shelter. Hide exchanged nods with a few who were alert to their passing, having recognized them from walks in friendlier weather. Yoshiki gave him a funny look when he noticed, but didn't say anything.

They passed along Muscle Beach, abandoned even by the hardiest of die-hards in this miserable downpour. Hide knew when Yoshiki spotted the dragon because he stopped dead and got this giant crazy grin. "Don't--" Hide spoke for the first time since they'd left the apartment, throat muted and rusty, but his voice sounded odd in the rain, breaking its hiss like the shattering of a bell. "Don't you dare run off - "

He was too late. Hide was left umbrellaless as Yoshiki ran squealing like a little girl for the dragon. "Damn," he sighed, and slowed to a halt. He dropped his head so his hair fell forward to shield his face from the rain and stared at his waterlogged shoes in pure misery.

A minute later he heard footsteps. Yoshiki's shiny dark boots came into view in front of his torn-up yellow All Stars just as he felt the thud of raindrops on his neck cease. A hand gently touched his shoulder.

Hide let his arms drop, having crossed them in a sad defense against the ick, and looked up. Soggy ropes of hair fell in his face and he gave them a half-hearted glare with crossed eyes.

"You look like an abandoned cat." Yoshiki's breath caught in a quiet laugh. "Sad and bedraggled in an alley somewhere. Should I take you home?"

One corner of Hide's mouth lifted and he shook his head, still blinking water out of his eyes. Yoshiki held the umbrella higher and with sober concentration, pushed Hide's hair back. "Fuck. Sorry, I..." He glanced back at the dragon and his cheeks flushed pink. "I got a little excited?"

"I know. You do that." Hide's eyes crinkled in a hidden smile.

"I'll buy you dinner to help make up for it." Yoshiki slid an arm around him. His other hand kept the umbrella steady between them.

"You were going to do that anyway." Hide looked over and smirked.

Yoshiki shrugged with the peaceful grin that was Hide's favorite. "But now we'll go somewhere better than McDonald's."

"Ass," Hide mumbled. His arm crept up around Yoshiki's back. Cool damp hair tickled his hand as it swung with each step they took.

Their feet splashed in the small pools that had collected in every step up to the pier. Hide's toes were going numb from the cold despite how he kept wiggling them and the wind was worse up here. He shivered. His hand clutched the neck of his jacket close and the arm around Yoshiki tightened.

Yoshiki looked at him out of the corner of his eyes. "You okay? We really can go back, I don't mind."

"Nah. It's cool." Hide forced himself still and steered them toward the north side of the pier before Yoshiki could spot the midway and coerce him into spending a fortune to win a shitty stuffed animal.

"I don't think you have to worry. It looks like they're all closed up anyway."

Hide eyed him and Yoshiki blinked, pretending innocence.

"Yeah, okay."

"I do pay attention, you know. It may not always seem like it..." Hide coughed a little, and Yoshiki poked him. "But I do know you pretty well by now." Yoshiki's arm tightened and he dropped his cheek to Hide's head in a half-hug. "Ew. I forgot your hair's all wet."

"That's what you get." Hide leaned in close, and decided to let the poking war die out for once in favor of comfort.

Half the shops they passed were closed. The rain had driven all but the fishermen to stay inside, nice and warm. Even the fishermen were reduced to the fewest he had ever seen out here.

Yoshiki pulled him now and then to the edge to stare down at the beach and, further up, at the muddy frothing waves. The boards creaked and groaned beneath their feet, gusts of salt water and fresh creosote from beneath the pier almost overpowering.

Hide nearly didn't notice the single vendor stand that was occupied, half-covered as it was with a blue tarp. They passed behind it, with Yoshiki dragging him to go faster because he wanted to get on the other side of the arcade buildings and look at the Ferris wheel. But the slightest thread of a very familiar scent led Hide to look around.

There she was, just visible in the gap between the backing wood and the tarp tied down along the booth's side; one of the Mexican family that he'd seen rotated in manning this one.

Hide pulled loose from Yoshiki with some regret and ducked away as quick as he could, gritting his teeth against the cold water that pelted his skin. Yoshiki stared after him, looking puzzled, and he waved him off. "I'll be right back." He rounded the corner.

Hide leaned over the counter on the heels of his hands until his head was just beneath the tarp. "Please." The woman inside looked up. "How much?"

"One is five dollars," she said with as much care as Hide had used, and they smiled at each other. That was an outrageous price, but the weather was, after all, complete shit today and he wasn't poor anymore.

He gave her a fifty and gestured to keep it. She beamed at him and said, "I hope your girlfriend likes."

Hide coughed a little over a snort and grinned like a maniac. "He will. Thank you."

Her little surprised look and smile were cute. There were enough fags around here, she should be used to it by now... Hide dashed back around the stand and looked for Yoshiki and his colorful umbrella.

He spotted the umbrella first, closed and set on a bench, then his eyes found the man hanging halfway over the damn rail on his stomach, trying to check out the supports beneath the pier - or something, it didn't matter. Hide's stomach turned flips at the sight. He dashed over and yanked Yoshiki down by the belt. "You damn idiot! What the hell do you - "

"Look, there's barnacles," Yoshiki said in glee. Hide blinked at him.

"So you're taking your idiotic life into your hands, leaning over a slippery rail in a rainstorm because - " He stopped there, slapped his hands up over his eyes as he shook his head in fierce disgust.

He felt the rain cease overhead and opened his eyes after a minute to find Yoshiki peering in at him. "You really do hate the rain, don't you?" Yoshiki said.

"You know I do," Hide muttered, helpless to stop the way his breath caught at how close they were now.

"But you're out in it anyway, because you love me." Yoshiki smiled like a deranged cross of the Buddha and the cat that got the cream.

He felt his cheeks go crimson in a rush, and abruptly regretted his purchase. "Don't joke..." he sighed under his breath.

"Huh?" Yoshiki leaned in even closer, and as Hide recited childhood baseball statistics in his head to keep himself from pulling Yoshiki that final half inch, Yoshiki spotted that he was holding something behind his back. "Hey, what's that?"

"Oh," Hide stuttered, "it's just... well." He yanked it out from behind his back and shoved the thing in Yoshiki's face, cheeks fully renewed in their burning. "Here."

Yoshiki took the single deep red rose from his hand, and pressed his nose to it to inhale deeply. "Hide..." he said quietly.

"Hmmmm?" Hide fidgeted, pulled on his hair, bumping the umbrella off-kilter.

"I love you."

His jaw dropped. Tears sprang to his eyes and he threw himself forward.

His arms slid in a rush around Yoshiki's back as he popped to his toes to bring them together at last in a long, intense, absolutely goddamned perfect kiss. Everything from the holey soles of his worn out shoes to the frizzy hair sticking straight up from his head buzzed and shone with incandescent happiness.

And then...

And then Yoshiki pushed him away and stuttered, "What the _fuck?!_"

 

* * *

 

  
_LATE JUNE 1992_   


Rain rattled against Hide's window. The skies over Santa Monica were the same heavy grey they'd been for two days now.

Hide pulled a handful of hair forward, then stared blankly at it for a minute before remembering why. Well, so between bleaching and turning it into a stand of beach grass all the time, it was already screwed, but the humidity didn't help at all. Walking out this morning for beer and orange juice had pushed it from fluff to poof.

He'd sat here in the nook off his kitchen all afternoon, writing some shit lyrics and dozing by turns. The sound of the rain beat through his head and pressed on the back of his eyes, dulled his brain. He had no energy now to even go to bed, no energy to do anything but sit here and look out the window, feeling it all around him, cold grey relentless.

The last time it had rained like this...

They hadn't really spoken since. Three weeks.

He didn't need to think about that. He absolutely did not need to think about that. His dull eyes turned to the kitchen counter and spotted the phone by his spider plant, a sheet of paper stuck to the wall beside it, scribbled solid with names and numbers. _Hi, I'd like a large order of emotional refreshment... Yeah, delivery. Greeeeat._

 

* * *

 

The phone rang. Sugizo bolted upright, swayed for a moment and then stretched a long arm across the still passed out Ryuichi to pick it up. "Mosh-- er, hello?"

"Sugi," a voice croaked, and Sugizo placed it after some thought as Hide's. "Come over."

"Okay." Sugizo blinked at the wall as it oozed in circles across from him. "Should I bring anything?"

"Not J."

There was a click and the dial tone flew out to assault his ears. With a wince, Sugizo hung up. _Sugar and smoke, smoke and sugar, aye-aye, captain._

 

* * *

 

"I've lost my pen lid again... Su, Su, Su, Sugi where's my pen lid?" Hide giggled and flopped back. His arms flew out, knocked the afternoon's beer cans off the coffee table in a series of pale yellow clinks.

The rain still poured but they were dedicating themselves to blotting it from Hide's mind, as he'd said he wanted when Sugizo washed up on his doorstep, extensions soggy but smile bright.

"What do you need it for anyway?" Sugizo's tongue was clumsy and thick. "You're going to use it, right... write stuff, right, write..." He played with that in his mind for a dreaming timeless time, as the rain tapped a black diamond hum that washed every sound he could see.

"But I have to have it," Hide was saying when Sugizo finally paid attention to the tugs on his arm. "It isn't right if you don't have the lid, it gets aaangry and I can't write anything but angry with an angry pen and I don't wanna be angry right now, I'm sick of it - " Hide stopped and collapsed in a rush into Sugizo's side. "I just want to be happy. Can't I, Suuuuugi?" Hide tilted his head up, searched for Sugizo-didn't-know-what in his face but he tried through the flowing haze to channel the appropriate expression to be what Hide needed to see right now, and maybe he did all right, because Hide reversed in his unhappy-spiral with a blurring suddenness and said, "Let's listen to something!"

"Like what?" Sugizo smiled, lips silly. "The demo?"

"No." Hide reversed again. The happy ground to a halt just as fast as it'd zoomed out, and Sugizo blinked at him in bewilderment and tried to catch up. Too slow. "I can't listen to that, not now. You want to ruin everything? Make me listen to that. I can't, it's too much... he's too much, I don't understand it..."

_You're too much and I don't understand you_, Sugizo thought. "Tokyo Yankees."

"No." The gloom increased. A flash like black lightning washed through Hide's aura. Sugizo blinked.

"...Luna Sea?" He gave a weak laugh as Hide peeked up through his front section of light pink hair to scowl and then smirk.

"Jane's Addiction. Have you heard them? Fucking brilliant - "

_Of course I've heard them_, Sugizo thought, _you play them every time we do this_, but there was no reason to say that, now was there? _I should have thought of that, they'll set him right_.

A long smoky brown bass line. A voice speaking over it at the edge of hearing. Acoustic guitar, shimmering gold-orange. Then the high voices started, sang in slow harmony and Sugizo remembered now just which song this was and -

"Hey, Hide, I'm gonna... I'm gonna go take a shower, okay? Sorry, but this stuff's making me sweat like mad and..." Sugizo shrugged. Hide nodded, already off in that private universe.

Sugizo shut himself in the bathroom, hesitating over the lock for a moment before leaving it off for safety's sake. His or Hide's, he didn't know. Both, really. The bronze tap ran with a cold green plinking sound and he shivered.

He had to run the water for a long time to get the right color out. It took a lot of debate between the screaming juicy bronze-blue or the deep crimson that glowed like the red red roses of Yoshiki's spirit totem, but Sugizo finally went against the bathing-in-Yoshiki idea (at least right now, since Hide was out there so distressed over something about the man like always, and who knew how he would react to Sugizo coming back in the room all slicked down and rubbed around with what amounted to pure distilled essence of Yoshiki?). That decided, the actual shower didn't take long at all.

Sugizo stepped out into a strange charcoal hum. No more song pulsing from the speakers in arches of Rainbow, version Sad. He stopped, cocked his head sideways and...

...listened for the ebb and flow of fuschia breath, and did not...

...see...

...it?

The towel dropped from slack fingers and he ran for the living room.

 

* * *

 

"He's - " Sugizo choked on his tongue. Air rushed out in an emerald gasp and he screamed into the phone, "Yoshiki, just HERE, now, COME--"

A rasp of tiny bubbling burnt pink sounded behind him and he whirled, leaving the phone to echo questions that grew in volume and urgency as Sugizo ignored them to grasp Hide by the shoulders and push him onto his side. "I'm an idiot, I'm so sorry, I should have known better - should have, shouldn't have left you, should have known - "

The puff of air on his fingertips stained them blue and he looked close, realized that Hide's lips were tinged with the same. He began to dig for the CPR they'd all learned before the tour, because you can't be too careful right, and nothing had happened but something had happened now to Hide-nii and Sugizo did not, could not, did not have a clue what to do. But sit by him in the hushed black crash of rain that fell beyond the window. And wait.

 

* * *

 

"What happened?" Shocks of blood veined the frozen purple of Yoshiki's voice. Sugizo widened his eyes with a half shrug, petrified out of speech.

"Help me carry him out. We'll... I know where we'll go. Help me!" Sharp yellow soaked with drops of clear black, falling, falling, unable to stop. "Get his feet."

Yoshiki swore constantly. The sports car whipped around everything on the road and lost traction every other minute, hydroplaned through stop signs and red lights, past shocked pedestrians who Sugizo would have sent up a small prayer for, were he not focused with every breath in his soul on the man in the passenger seat in front of him who was drowning on air and far too quiet in every hard breath.

Shivers ran down his spine. He shook in edged silence.

Roads flew beneath the hot-white hum of tires and engine, arcs of dead sound hissed in a pale fall from Hide's lips, stuttering, weak. Minutes were hours, years...

The car stopped. Yoshiki got out with a hoarse blue shout for help. Sugizo watched green flame lick hard up its edges.

The nice people in white coats brought him to a chair and bade him stay.

Rain poured over the walls, over the rails of his chair. Over the bed in this private clinic where Hide took shallow leaden breaths and would not open his eyes.

 

* * *

 

"Sugi?" a voice croaked, the yellow brown of baby shit.

Sugizo opened his eyes, unkinked his neck with a pained gasp. "Huh... Huh? --_Hide_?!"

"Yeah." Hide gave a weak sigh.

Sugizo jolted out of his chair to bounce hard onto the bed, catching himself at the last moment before he hit the arm with the IV drip. He clung hard to every part of Hide that seemed safe for clinging. Hide made a little choked burbley sound and Sugizo realized it was a laugh. He pulled back, looking down. "You're not okay yet, are you."

"I'm a hell of a lot better than I could be."

A throat cleared behind them. "Yes. Yes, you are." Shards of obsidian words hung in the still air.

"Sugizo," Hide said slowly, "Why don't you go sit down now."

 

* * *

 

Sugizo huddled in the chair, curled with a whimper as tight as he could manage, tighter. Let him become a speck, a mote of dust that could roll away and disappear and not ever ever know it had been a witness to this day.

He felt as a small child, hidden beneath the bed while his parents savaged each other with words. The world, stripped dead white, crashed around him.

"The _band_ \- " Hide rasped, "We have layers on layers of twisted _everything_ \- and all you want to say is, How could I do this to the _band_ \- "

"I won't say it again," Yoshiki whispered. The bed rail creaked as his hands flexed. "There is no confusion about - "

"Fuck you."

Silence.

"I won't say it again." Hide's voice was calm, meditative. "There is no confusion about the lie you want to live for the sake of - of public memory - " A slow breath that shook as it tried not to become a sob.

"Don't." Yoshiki sounded helpless.

"We could be happy." A long pause. Another labored breath. "You know?"

 

* * *

 

"Don't," Sugizo whispered. Tears poured down his face, stained his hands.

Blank eyes stared beyond him. A soul that hated its incarnation tore apart with dry sobs.

 

* * *

 

_   
NOVEMBER 1992   
_

Hide spotted J across the reception hall and made a beeline for him. _And Inoran, always where J's at._ Hide smiled at them. He may need to have a chat with either or both sometime soon, after what Sugizo had said about their time in LA. But not now. Brotherly duty could wait.

They didn't know, either of them. _This will die with you,_ Yoshiki had said to Hide and Sugizo before he left. Nothing to stain Yoshiki's immortal image.

Hide shook off the thought and smiled again. _Choice, or fate?_

J gave him a hug. Inoran followed suit, without J's puppydog enthusiasm, luckily for Hide's ribs.

"Did you like the last version of the song?" J looked excited and nervous. Inoran looked like he wanted a drink.

_Hmm, I want a drink right now, too, actually._ He'd been forced off his Yoshiki addiction, then the substitute... alcohol was still allowed, as far as he knew. _Why the fuck not._

"I loved it, it was great. Let's get wasted."

"Sounds good," Inoran mumbled as J went in search of whiskey.

Hide touched his shoulder. "We have a lot to talk about, don't we?"

"...could be." Inoran looked over at the bar, then back at Hide. "How are you still here, again?"

A long moment passed before Hide came to the conclusion that Sugizo's lips hadn't been as sealed as Yoshiki might wish. But then, that was asking a lot of that guy. Hide loved him but there was no denying his character quirks - the emotional pressure alone would have pushed him to confide in at least one person. Given the choices... Inoran was probably best.

"That's where it comes in handy being a musician." Hide's smile was more of a grimace. "You can write your entire life in lyrics and as long as it sounds artistic, nobody will blink. Then you only have to deal with screaming your heart out to an arena of strangers every night, while the person the words are directed to is... right there across the stage. Just as unblinking. So it works itself away, night by night."

"You're sure about that?"

So it wasn't like he'd had enough lives to thoroughly test the theory yet. Still. "It sounds good, doesn't it?"

"Yeah." Inoran shrugged, flashed him a half-hearted smile like, _You're full of shit, Hide-nii, but I hope it's true for you._ Hide smiled back and let it go.

_If this was fate, then I really fucking hope I volunteered for it._

Yoshiki was at the champagne table. "I'll see you, Ino - have to go bother Yo-chan for a minute or he'll think I'm getting old." Inoran nodded to his wave.

"So," Hide murmured as he slid his hands into Yoshiki's hair and tugged, "Come here often?"

Yoshiki froze and then tilted his head over to look at Hide. A hint of a smile reached his eyes. "Not really. You?"

"Never. Want to blow this joint? Just you and me?"

"Sure." Yoshiki took his hand willingly enough, and they slid between the suits talking business, though not without hearing a few comments about their hair, their sunglasses. Their tightly clasped hands.

Outside, Yoshiki laughed and leaned on the wall. "Well, we do have to go back. Thanks for the break, though." He offered Hide a cigarette, which was accepted.

"Sure." Hide lit Yoshiki's, then his, and settled back to smoke. "It's just... it's good to see you relax again."

He could feel Yoshiki's eyes on him and he took a long drag, letting his lips wrap around and slide off just _so_. And yes. Yoshiki's breath audibly hitched.

"Or maybe not relax so much as... be yourself," Hide murmured.

"Oh, fuck you." Yoshiki sighed, eyes fixed at his feet.

"I wanted to." Hide took another drag. Let it out. "I still want to. If we're being honest for a change."

"Why?"

"I love you."

"It's not as easy as that."

"No shit."

Hide finished his cigarette, ground it out. He started to go back inside, then looked back at Yoshiki.

"A broad choice is made up of smaller ones, ya know. Within that, you have quite a bit of leeway. For example, without changing anything of the big picture, you can easily change the part which states that you are not allowed to be in love with me. Not allowed to want me." He crossed back over to where Yoshiki stared out into the darkness. Gathered Yoshiki's hair in both hands, pulled until Yoshiki's head tilted back, willing, although his eyes were closed. Hide leaned in to kiss Yoshiki's neck, his hair falling down over his chest.

"If it's fate, then it won't matter. If it's choice, then remake it." Hide cleared his throat, and let his hips grind lightly on Yoshiki's. "You know I'm right."

The lack of argument said enough.

"I want you. I love you." Hide kept his grip in Yoshiki's hair and walked around to face him. Leaned up to kiss him. "Damn you and your high heels."

"They're boots." Yoshiki sounded almost shy, stuttering, but unable to let a correction pass even still.

"Yeah. I know, I know, I wear 'em too. Just not tonight." Hide jerked his chin at his flat dress shoes. So conservative for once, even with the blond and pink hair halfway down his back. He smoothed a hand along Yoshiki's chest just to _feel_ him suck in the breath.

"One more kiss. Then I'll go in and let you think."

He took silence as consent. Yoshiki's lips touched his on a low moan. Hide wasn't sure if it had come from him or Yoshiki but _fuck_...

Long minutes passed before Hide made himself lean away. They'd ground together as much as they kissed and he knew he wasn't the only one hard now. Desperate with it.

"I know you won't let me. Not now. But at least - " Hide hesitated, then made himself stumble through. "Think about me. Fair enough?"

"If..."

Hide leaned closer, let Yoshiki's arms slide up his back to gather his hair as he'd done to Yoshiki's. He brought his head forward to rest in the hollow of Yoshiki's neck. His favorite place in the world.

Yoshiki's hand held his hair from behind, until Hide's head was tilted back and his body arched deeply. With the other hand, Yoshiki stroked down Hide's back, pulled their hips together.

"If you'll think about me."

"I always do," Hide whispered as he was released to walk away. "I always do."


End file.
